Rodrigo Maltez Novaes

How Soon Is Now? (II), 2017

In 2012, How Soon Is Now? was presented at the opening of Glasauge, an exhibition by the Institut für Raumexperimente. The performance consisted of two men kissing for two and a half hours without pause. It involved two bodies fixed to each other for a long period of time. The performance was about issues of physicality, presence, duration, emotional bonding and other issues that are mostly avoided in our daily lives and relations with others. How Soon Is Now? (II) is a follow-up piece created for the Festival to deal with the same issues. This time, the action is performed in one thousand micro performances (or more) to be performed by complete strangers during the Festival (or beyond) at any given time or place. With the cards in hand, and with art and science as an excuse, willing participants are encouraged to approach complete strangers and attempt to form an emotional bond.

According to a scientific paper led by Dr. Arthur Aron on the experimental generation of interpersonal closeness, we only need to stare at a stranger’s eyes uninterruptedly for at least four minutes after a short conversation in order to generate an emotional bond. How Soon Is Now? (II) is a kind of experiment that gives the participants an excuse and an objective: to form an emotional bond with a stranger by following the basic precepts of the original scientific experiment in the name of art.